The Shadow of the Sun

Zanzibar

I was driving west — from Nairobi to Kampala. It was early Sunday morning, and the road, running over creased, hilly land, was empty. On the asphalt ahead of me, the rays of the sun created lakes of light, glistening, vibrating. As I approached, the light would vanish, the asphalt would be gray for a moment, then turn to black, but soon the next lake would flame up, and the next. The journey was being transformed into a cruise through a realm of radiant waters, abruptly igniting and dying out, like strobe lights in a crazed discotheque. Both sides of the road were lushly green — forests of eucalyptus, large plantations of the Tea and Bond Co. Here and there among the cypress and cedars one caught a glimpse of an Englishman’s white farmhouse. Suddenly, far, far away, at the farthest visible point on the highway, I spotted a glowing sphere, which grew rapidly and drew closer. I barely managed to move to the shoulder of the road when a column of cars and motorcycles sped past, at its center a black Mercedes carrying Jomo Kenyatta. Kenyatta was seldom in his prime minister’s office in Nairobi, preferring to spend most of his time in Gatundu, a private residence 160 kilometers from the capital. His favorite pastime was watching dance troupes from various Kenyan tribes, who arrived there to sweeten their leader’s days. Despite the noise of the drums, the pipes, and the shouts of the dancers, Kenyatta would fall asleep in his armchair, reviving only when the dancers tiptoed out after their performance and silence descended.

But Kenyatta here, now? On a Sunday morning? His motorcade rushing at such breakneck speed? Something extraordinary must have happened.

Without hesitating, I turned around and followed the convoy. A quarter of an hour later we were in the capital. The cars pulled up to the prime minister’s office — a modern, twelve-story structure on City Square in downtown Nairobi — but the police barred my way and I had to stop. I was left alone on the empty street, with no one in sight from whom to get information. In any event, it didn’t look as if anything was happening in Nairobi itself: the city was slumbering, in a Sunday torpor, deserted.

It occurred to me that it might be a good idea to drop by Felix’s place — he might know something. Felix Naggar was the bureau chief of Agence France Presse in East Africa. He lived in a villa in Ridgeways, an exclusive, hyperelegant Nairobi neighborhood. Felix was an institution. He knew everything, and his net of informers stretched from Mozambique to the Sudan, from the Congo to Madagascar. He himself rarely stepped outside his house. He was either supervising his cooks — he had the best kitchen in all of Africa — or sitting in front of the fireplace reading crime novels. In his mouth he held a cigar. He never removed it — unless it was just for a moment, in order to swallow a bite of baked lobster or taste a spoonful of pistachio sorbet. Every now and then the phone would ring. Naggar would pick up the receiver, scribble something down on a bit of paper, and walk to the other end of the house, where his aides sat at teleprinters (they were the most handsome young Indians he could find in Africa). He would dictate to them the text of the telegram, fluently, with no hesitations or corrections, then return either to the kitchen, where he would stir something in the pots, or before the fireplace, to continue reading.

I found him now sitting in the armchair, as usual, with a cigar and a crime novel.

“Felix!” I shouted from the threshhold. “Something is happening, because Kenyatta just returned to Nairobi!” And I told him about the government motorcade I had encountered on my way to Uganda. Naggar ran to the phone and started dialing everywhere. I turned on his radio. It was a Zenith, a shortwave receiver, phenomenal — I had been dreaming about one for years. It picked up several hundred stations, even shipboard transmissions. At first all I could hear were broadcasts of masses, Sunday sermons, and organ music. Commercials, programs in unintelligible languages, the calls of muezzins. Then, suddenly, through the noise and static, a barely audible voice came through: “… the tyranny of the sultan of Zanzibar has ended once and for all… the governments of bloodsuckers, which… signed, general headquarters of the revolution, the field marshall…”

More noise and static, then the loose, flowing words and rhythms of the fashionable band, Mount Kenya. That was it, but we now knew the most important thing: a coup in Zanzibar! It must have happened last night. That’s why Kenyatta had returned in such haste to Nairobi. The revolt could spread to Kenya, to all of East Africa. It could transform it into another Algeria, another Congo. But at this moment, for us — for Felix and for me — there was but one issue: to get to Zanzibar.

We began by calling East African Airways. The first flight to Zanzibar, they informed us, is on Monday. We booked places. An hour later, however, they called us back to say that the airport in Zanzibar had been closed and all flights canceled. What now? How do we get there? There was an evening flight to Dar es Salaam. From there, it’s not far to the island: forty kilometers across the water. We had no choice; we decided to fly to Dar and set out from there for Zanzibar. As we were figuring all this out, the rest of Nairobi’s foreign correspondents arrived at Felix’s house. There were forty of us. Americans, Englishmen, Germans, Russians, Italians. We all decided to take the same plane.

In Dar es Salaam we took over the Imperial Hotel, an old building with a spectacular veranda, from which the bay is visible. Rocking on its waters was the white yacht of the sultan of Zanzibar. The young sultan — Seyyid Jamshid bin Abdulla bin Harub bin Thwain bin Said — had escaped on this yacht, leaving behind the palace, the treasury, and his red Rolls-Royce. The crew of the yacht tell us about the great carnage overtaking the island. Blood is flowing in the streets. The rabble are looting, raping, setting fire to houses. No one is safe.

For the time being, Zanzibar is cut off from the world. Their radio announces every hour that any airplane attempting to land on the island will be shot down. And any approaching boat or ship will be sunk. They are sending out these warnings, we reason, because they must be afraid of intervention. We sit around listening to the communiqués, condemned to idleness and interminable waiting. In the morning, we receive news that British warships are sailing toward Zanzibar. Tom, from Reuters, is rubbing his hands in anticipation, convinced that he will be transported aboard ship by helicopter and will land on the island with the first division of the marines. All of us can think of one thing only: how can we get to Zanzibar? I have the fewest options, because I have no money. In cases of revolutions, coups, and wars, the large agencies don’t worry about expenditures. They pay whatever is necessary to obtain firsthand information. The correspondent from AP, AFP, or the BBC charters a plane or a ship, or purchases a car that he will need for only several hours — anything to get to where the action is. I stood no chance on such a playing field; I could only hope for some opportunity, for a stroke of luck.

At noon, a fisherman’s boat pulled up near our hotel. Aboard were several American journalists, their faces burned lobster red by the sun. They had tried to reach Zanzibar that morning, their boat was already close, when those onshore started shooting at them, bullets flying so thick and fast that they had to give up and turn around. The sea route was closed.

After lunch I drove to the airport to see what was happening there. The terminal was full of journalists, piles of cameras and suitcases everywhere. Many of the reporters were dozing in armchairs, others were drinking beer at the bar, sweaty, exhausted by the heat, tropically disheveled. The plane for Cairo departed, and it grew quiet all around. A herd of cows walked slowly across the runway. Other than that, there was no sign of life in this hot, dead space, this desolate emptiness at the end of the world.

I was thinking of returning to town when suddenly Naggar appeared, stopped me, and took me aside. Although we were alone in this place, he looked around to make sure no one could hear him, and, speaking in a whisper, mysteriously, he said that he and Arnold (a cameraman from NBC) had hired a small plane and paid a pilot to fly them to Zanzibar. They couldn’t get going, however, because the airport there was still closed. They had just come from the air traffic control tower, and had spoken to the one at the airport on Zanzibar, asking if they would be allowed to land. No, they were told; they would be fired upon if they tried.

Relating all this, Naggar was nervous. I noticed that he threw away a barely lit cigar and quickly pulled out another one.

“What do you think?” he said. “What can we do?”

“What sort of plane is it?” I asked.

“A Cessna,” he answered. “A four-seater.”

“Felix,” I said, “if I manage to secure permission to land, will you take me for free?”

“Of course!” He agreed instantly.

“Good. I need one hour.”

As I was saying all this, I was aware I was bluffing (though it turned out later not to have been a complete bluff). I jumped in the car and raced back to town.

In the very center of Dar es Salaam, halfway along Independence Avenue, stands a four-story, poured-concrete building encircled with balconies: the New Africa Hotel. There is a large terrace on the roof, with a long bar and several tables. All of Africa conspires here these days. Here gather the fugitives, refugees, and emigrants from various parts of the continent. One can spot sitting at one table Mondlane from Mozambique, Kaunda from Zambia, Mugabe from Rhodesia. At another — Karume from Zanzibar, Chisiza from Malawi, Nujoma from Namibia, etc. Tanganyika is the first independent country in these parts, so people from all the colonies flock here. In the evening, when it grows cooler and a refreshing breeze blows in from the sea, the terrace fills with people discussing, planning courses of action, calculating their strengths and assessing their chances. It becomes a command center, a temporary captain’s bridge. We, the correspondents, come by here frequently, to pick up something. We already know all the leaders, we know who is worth sidling up to. We know that the cheerful, open Mondlane talks willingly, and that the mysterious, closed Chisiza won’t even part his lips.

On the terrace one could always hear music coming from below. Two floors down, Henryk Subotnik, from Lodz, Poland, ran the Paradise nightclub. When World War II broke out, Subotnik found himself in the Soviet Union, and then, by way of Iran, reached Mombasa by ship. Here he fell ill with malaria, and instead of joining the Second Polish Army Corps in Italy, under the command of General Wladyslaw Anders, he stayed in Tanganyika.

His club is always jammed, crowded, and noisy. Customers are drawn here by the charms of the chocolate-colored Miriam, a beautiful stripper from the distant Seychelles. For a show-stopper she has a special way of peeling and eating a banana.

“Did you know, Mr. Henryk,” I asked Subotnik, whom I just happened to find at the bar, “that there is turmoil on Zanzibar?”

“Do I know!?” he exclaimed with surprise. “I know everything!”

“Mr. Henryk,” I asked again, “do you think that Karume is over there?”

Abeid Karume was the leader of Zanzibar’s Afro-Shirazi Party. Although this party, representing the island’s black African population, won a majority in the last elections, the government was formed by an Arab minority party supported by London — the Zanzibar Nationalist Party. The Africans, outraged by this fact, organized a revolt and abolished Arab rule. That is what had just transpired two days ago.

“Is Karume there?!” Subotnik laughed in such a way that I knew one thing for certain: he was there.

And that is all I needed.

I returned to the airport. Dodging about with Felix so that no one could make out where we were headed, we reached the control tower. Felix asked one of those on duty to connect us by telephone with the tower at the airport in Zanzibar. When a voice answered on the other end, I took the receiver and asked to speak to Karume. He wasn’t there, but was expected at any minute. I put down the receiver and we decided to wait. A quarter of an hour later, the telephone rang. I recognized Karume’s thundering, hoarse voice. For twenty years he had sailed the world as an ordinary sailor, and now, even if he was speaking into someone’s ear, he thundered as loudly as if he were trying to outshout the roar of a stormy ocean.

“Abeid,” I said, “we have a small plane here, and there are three of us: an American, a Frenchman, and myself. We wanted to fly to you. Is it possible? We won’t write any dirt, I promise you that. I swear — no lies. Could you arrange for them not to shoot us down as we land?”

A long silence ensued, and then I heard his voice again. We had permission, he said, and we would be met at the airport. We ran to the plane, and moments later were airborne, over the sea. I was sitting next to the pilot, Felix and Arnold in the back. The cabin was silent. Yes, we were happy that we had succeeded in getting through the blockade, and that we would be the first ones on the island, but at the same time we didn’t know what, actually, awaited us.

On the one hand, experience had taught me that situations of crisis appear more dire and dangerous from a distance than they do up close. Our imaginations hungrily and greedily absorb every tiny bit of sensational news, the slightest portent of peril, the faintest whiff of gunpowder, and instantly inflate these signs to monstrous, paralyzing proportions. On the other hand, however, I also knew something about those moments when calm, deep waters begin to churn and bubble into general chaos, confusion, frantic anarchy. During social explosions, it is easy to perish by accident, because someone didn’t hear something fully or didn’t notice something in time. On such days, the accidental is king; it becomes history’s true determinant and master.

Less than an hour’s flying time, and we are approaching the airport. Zanzibar: the old Arab town, like a brooch skillfully sculpted out of white stone, and further on forests of coconut palms, enormous, branching clove trees, and fields of corn and cassava, all of it framed by the brilliant sandy beach punctuated by aquamarine inlets in which bob flotillas of fishermen’s boats.

When we are already close to the ground, we see armed men positioned on both sides of the runway. A feeling of relief, because they are not taking aim at us, are not shooting. There are several dozen of them, and one notices immediately that they are poorly, carelessly dressed — half-naked, in fact. The pilot taxis the plane to the main building. Karume is not there, but there are some people who introduce themselves as his aides. They will take us to the hotel, they say, and request that the plane take off again at once.

We drive to town in two police vans. The road is empty, there are hardly any people visible. We pass some ruined houses, a destroyed, disemboweled shop. One enters the city through a magnificent, massive gate, beyond which immediately begin narrow streets, so narrow that a car can barely fit through. If someone were walking toward us, he would have to duck into a doorway and wait until we passed.

But at this time the city is silent; doors are either shut or torn out of their frames, windows tightly shuttered. A torn-off signboard on which is written “Maganlal Yejchand Shah”; a broken window in the shop Noorbhai Aladin and Sons; a similarly gaping and empty store next door, M. M. Bhagat and Sons, Agents for Favre Leuba, Geneva.

Several barefoot boys are walking by, one of them holding a gun.

“This is our problem,” says one of our guides. His name is Ali. He worked on a clove plantation. “We had only several dozen old guns, confiscated from the police. Very few automatic weapons. The principal arms are machetes, knives, clubs, sticks, axes, hammers. But you’ll see for yourselves.”

We got rooms in the deserted Arab neighborhood, in the Zanzibar Hotel. The building was constructed in such a way that it always provided coolness and shade. We sat down at the bar, to catch our breath. Every now and then some people we didn’t know would come up to see and greet us. At one point, a slight, energetic old woman came in. She began questioning us: What are we doing here? what for? where from? When she got to me and I told her where I was from, she seized me by the hand, paused, and began reciting in flawless Polish:

Pogodą rana lśni polana,

Cisza opieszcza smukłość drzew,

Dygotem liści rozszeptana,

Źdźbla trawy kłoni lekki wiew.

Naggar, Arnold, our escort, all those barefoot warriors now congregating in the hotel’s reception area, were frozen in astonishment.

Tak cicho jest i slodko wszędy,

I tak przedziwny wkoło świat,

Jakbyś przed chwilą przeszła tędy,

Musnąwszy trawy skrajem szat.

“Staff?” I asked, hesitatingly.

“Of course it’s Staff. Leopold Staff!” she said triumphantly. “My name is Helena Tręmbecka. From Podole. I have a hotel right next door. It’s called Pigalle. Please come. You will find Karume there and all his people, because I am serving them free beer!”

What happened on Zanzibar? Why are we here, in a hotel guarded by a troop of barefoot zealots with machetes? (If truth be told, their leader has a rifle, but there’s no telling whether it’s loaded.)

If someone looks carefully at a detailed map of Africa, he will notice that the continent is surrounded by numerous islands. Some are so small they are registered only on highly specialized navigational maps, but others are large enough to appear on ordinary atlases. On the northern side of the continent lie Dzalita and Kerkenna, Lampione and Lampedusa; on the western side of the Canary and Cape Verde Islands, Gorée and Fernando Po, Príncipe and São Tomé, Tristan da Cunha and Annobón; and on the eastern side Shaduan and Gifatun, Suakin and Dahlak, Socotra, Pemba, and Zanzibar, Mafia Island and the Amirante Islands, the Comoros, Madagascar, and the Mascarene Islands. In reality, there are many, many more; one can count dozens, if not hundreds of them, for some branch out into whole archipelagos, while others are encircled by mysterious worlds of coral beds and sandy shoals, which emerge only at low tide to display their dazzle of colors and shapes. The abundance of these islands and promontories suggests the act of creation being as it were interrupted, never completed, so that the continent which is visible and palpable today is merely that part of geologic Africa that has managed to emerge from the oceans, while the rest remains at the bottom, and these islands are just those of its peaks that have broken the surface.

One can imagine this geological phenomenon had historical consequences. Africa had long been at once a place of terror and of temptation. On the one hand, it struck fear into foreigners, and remained unexplored and unconquered. For centuries, its interior was successfully defended by a difficult tropical climate, long incurable diseases (malaria, smallpox, sleeping illness, leprosy, and the like), the lack of roads and means of transport, and, also, the frequently fierce resistance of its inhabitants. This inaccessibility of Africa gave birth to the myth of its mystery: Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” began at the continent’s sunny coasts, as one disembarked from the ship onto solid ground.

But at the same time Africa seduced, beckoning with its dream of rich spoils, lavish booty.

Whoever set out for its shores embraced a most risky undertaking, an endgame of life and death. As late as the first half of the nineteenth century, more than half the Europeans who made it here died of malaria — but many of those who survived returned with sudden and great fortunes: loads of gold, ivory, and, first and foremost, black slaves.

And it is in this connection that the dozens of islands scattered along the continent’s shores come into the picture, aided by a multinational band of sailors, merchants, and robbers. The islands become for them toeholds, mainstays, havens, and factories. They are, first of all, safe: too far from the mainland for Africans to reach in their unstable boats carved from tree trunks, yet close enough for the Europeans to establish and maintain contact.

The role of these islands increases especially during the epoch of the slave trade: many of them are transformed into concentration camps, where slaves awaiting the ships that will carry them to America, Europe, and Asia are imprisoned.

The slave trade: it lasts approximately three hundred years. It begins in the middle of the fifteenth century, and ends — when? Officially, in the second half of the nineteenth, but in some instances significantly later. In northern Nigeria, for example, it ends only in 1936. The trade occupies a central position in African history. Millions (the estimates differ — fifteen to thirty million people) were captured and shipped under horrendous conditions across the Atlantic. It is thought that in the course of such a journey (which lasted two to three months) nearly half the slaves routinely died of hunger, asphyxiation, or thirst; sometimes all of them perished. Those who survived were later put to work on sugar and cotton plantations in Brazil, in the Caribbean, in the United States, building the riches of that hemisphere. The slave traders (mainly the Portuguese, the Dutch, English, French, Americans, Arabs, and their African partners) depopulated the continent and condemned it to a vegetative apathy: up to the present day, large stretches remain desolate, transformed into desert. To this day Africa has not recovered from this misfortune, from this nightmare.

The slave trade also had disastrous psychological consequences. It poisoned interpersonal relations among Africa’s inhabitants, propagated hatred, inflamed wars. The strong would try to overpower the weak and sell them in the marketplace, kings traded their subjects, conquerors their prisoners, courts of law those they had condemned.

On the psyche of the African this trade left the deepest and most painfully permanent scar: the inferiority complex. I, a black man or woman: i.e., the one whom the white merchant, occupier, torturer can abduct from house or field, put in irons, herd aboard ship, sell, then drive with a whip to ghastly toil.

The ideology of the slave traders was based on the belief that the black man is not human, that mankind is divided into humans and subhumans, and that with the latter one can do as one will — preferably, exploit their labor and then dispose of them. In the notes and records maintained by these traders is laid out (although in a primitive form) the entire later ideology of racism and totalitarianism, with its core thesis that the Other is the enemy; worse— subhuman. The philosophy that inspired the construction of Kolyma and Auschwitz, one of obsessive contempt and hatred, vileness and brutality, was formulated and set down centuries earlier by the captains of the Martha and the Progresso, the Mary Ann and the Rainbow, as they sat in their cabins gazing out the portholes at groves of palm trees and sun-warmed beaches, waiting aboard their ships anchored off the islands of Sherbro, or Zanzibar, for the next batch of black slaves to be loaded.

In this trade — a worldwide enterprise, really, for Europe, both Americas, and many countries of the Near East and Asia participated in it — Zanzibar is a sad, dark star, a grim address, a cursed isle. Toward it, for years — no, centuries — drew caravans of slaves freshly seized in the interior of the continent, in Congo and Malawi, in Zambia, Uganda, and the Sudan. Frequently tied together with ropes, to make escape more difficult, they served at the same time as porters, carrying to the harbor and onto ships valuable mechandise: tons of ivory, gallons of palm oil, the skins of wild animals, precious stones, ebony.

Transported on boats from the continent’s coast to the island, they were then exhibited for sale in the marketplace. It was called Mkunazini, and it occupied the square near my hotel upon which today stands the Anglican cathedral. The prices varied: from one dollar for a child, to twelve for a young, beautiful girl. Rather expensive, since in Senegambia for one horse the Portuguese could get twelve slaves.

The healthiest and strongest were then driven from Mkunazini to the port: it is close by, several hundred meters. From here, on ships specially designed for the transport of slaves, they would sail to America, or to the Near East. The seriously ill, for whom no one wanted to pay even a few cents, were thrown upon the rocky shore after the day’s activity in the marketplace ended; here they would be devoured by prowling bands of wild dogs. Those among the weak who managed in time to get better and regain their strength would remain on Zanzibar and work as slaves to the Arabs — the proprietors of the enormous plantations of clove trees and coconut palms. Many who took part in the revolution were the grandsons of these slaves.

In the early morning, when the breeze from the sea was still crisp and the temperatures relatively cool, I set out for town. Two young men with machetes follow me. Protectors? Guards? Police? I don’t try to engage them in conversation. Their simple, poorly made machetes clearly present a problem for them. How should they carry them? Proudly and fiercely, or shyly and discreetly? The machete has always been the tool of the laborer, of the pariah, a sign of low status; now, since a few days ago, it has become prestigious, a symbol of power. Whoever has one on him has to belong to the victorious class, for the conquered walk around empty-handed, weaponless.

Immediately upon leaving the hotel one enters the narrow streets typical of old Arab towns. I cannot say why these people built in such a cramped and crowded fashion, why they pressed together this way, practically one atop another. Was it so that they would never have far to walk? Or to be better able to defend the town? I don’t know. But one thing is certain: this mass of piled stone, this accretion of walls, this layering of balconies, recesses, eaves, and rooftops, somehow secured, as though in an icy treasury, a corner of shade, a tiny breeze, and a bit of coolness during the most terrifying noontime heat.

The streets were constructed with similar foresight and ingenuity. They are so situated and arranged that whichever one you take, and in whichever direction, you will ultimately arrive at the seashore, at a wide boulevard where it is more spacious and pleasant than in the congested center.

The city is now deserted and lifeless. What a contrast with how it looked just a few days ago! For Zanzibar was the place where you could meet half the world. Centuries ago, Muslim refugees from Shiraz, Iran, settled on this island already inhabited by indigenous people. With time, they mingled with the local population, nevertheless retaining a certain separateness: they did not come from Africa, after all, but from Asia. Later, Arabs from the Persian Gulf started to arrive. They conquered the island’s Portuguese rulers and seized power, which they then exercised for 260 years. They filled the leading positions in the most lucrative lines of business: the trade in slaves and ivory. They became the proprietors of the best stretches of land and the largest plantations. They commanded a great fleet of ships. With time, Indians and Europeans — mainly the British and the Germans — also came to play key roles in the trade.

Formally, the island was ruled by a sultan, the descendant of Arabs from Oman. In reality, it was a British colony (officially a protectorate).

The lush, fertile plantations of Zanzibar lured people from the continent. They found work here harvesting cloves and coconuts. With increasing frequency, they remained here and settled. In this climate and with the pervading poverty, moving from place to place is not difficult: in just a few hours, you can erect a shelter and stash all your possessions inside — a shirt, a pot, a water bottle, a piece of soap, and a mat. A man can quickly have a roof over his head and, most importantly, his own place on earth; he can now start looking around for something to eat. This presents more of a problem. In practice, he can get work only on an Arab plantation — everything is in their hands. For years, the newcomer from the continent treated this order of things as normal — until, that is, a leader and agitator showed up in the neighborhood and told him that this Arab was someone Other, and that there was something ominous, satanic, about this Other: he was not only a stranger, but a bloodsucker and an enemy. The universe that the immigrant had perceived as preordained once and for all by the gods and the ancestors, he now saw as an injurious and degrading order, which, if he was to continue living, must be changed.

Herein lies the attractiveness of ethnic agitation: its ease and accessibility. The Other is visible, everyone can recognize and remember his image. One doesn’t have to read books, think, discuss: it is enough just to look.

On Zanzibar, this racial dichotomy, increasingly fraught, is created on the one hand by the ruling Arabs (20 percent of the population), and on the other by their subjects, black Africans from the island and the continent — small farmers and fishermen, an indeterminate and fluid mass of laborers, house servants, donkey drivers, porters.

These tensions mount at the very moment when the Arab world and black Africa are both setting out on their respective roads to independence. What does this mean on Zanzibar? The Arabs are saying, We want independence (meaning: we want to stay in power). The Africans are saying the same thing: we want independence. But they imbue this slogan with another meaning: because we are the majority, power should be transferred into our hands.

Those are the states and the essence of the conflict. And the British then add fuel to the fire. Because they have good relations with sultans of the Persian Gulf (from whom the sultan of Zanzibar traces his descent), and because they fear an Africa in revolt, they announce that Zanzibar is part of the Arab world, not of the African, and by granting it independence they simultaneously ratify Arab power. The African party — the Afro-Shirazi Party, whose leader is Abeid Karume — protests against this, but it protests legally, observing the law, because although it consitutes the opposition, it is a parliamentary opposition.

Meantime, a young man from Uganda turns up in Zanzibar — John Okello. He has just turned twenty-five. As is frequently the case in Africa, he has, or he pretends to have, many professions — he is a stonecutter, a bricklayer, a house painter. A semi-illiterate, but endowed with charisma, a self-made man with a sense of mission. He is animated by several simple ideas, which come to him as he is cutting stone or laying bricks:

These thoughts so absorb and consume him that he has to spend a lot of time alone in the forest, because it is only there that he can fully surrender to them. At the same time, already a year prior to Zanzibar’s independence, Okello single-handedly begins organizing his underground army. Driving around the island, through villages and towns, he sets up divisions, which in the end will number more than three thousand. Their education begins immediately. For some, this consists of training in the use of bows and arrows, knives, sticks, and spears. Other divisions practice fighting with axes, machetes, chains, and hammers. Additional courses include instruction in wrestling, boxing, and throwing stones.

On the eve of the uprising Okello appoints himself field marshal and gives the rank of army general to several of his closest aides, most of them plantation workers and former policemen.

Three hours after Prince Philip, in the name of Queen Elizabeth, transfers Zanzibar into Arab hands, Field Marshal John Okello makes his move, and in the course of a single night seizes power on Zanzibar.

Before noon, Felix, Arnold, and I drive with our escort to the field marshal’s headquarters. The courtyard of an Arab house is teeming with people. The women are cooking cassava and vegetables over fires, roasting chickens and lamb kebabs. Our guides push us through the crowd, which parts unwillingly and eyes us with suspicion but also with some curiosity: in these hours, all the white people are in hiding. In a large oriental foyer, on an ebony armchair, sits Okello, smoking a cigarette. He has very dark skin, and a massive head with heavy features. He is wearing a policeman’s cap: his units had seized the police storehouses and found some rifles and uniforms inside. A piece of blue fabric is tied around the band of his cap (I don’t know what the color signifies). Okello seems absent, as if he is in shock; he appears not to see us. People are crowding in around him, pushing, shoving, everyone is saying something, gesticulating; the disorder is cosmic, and no one is trying to control it. A conversation, of course, is out of the question. At this point, we are after only one thing: that he give us permission to remain on the island. Our guides address him. Okello nods his consent. A moment later, something occurs to him, and he decides to accompany us out. He throws an old rifle over his shoulder and grabs another in his hand. With his first hand he first adjusts the pistol stuck in his belt, then picks up another one. Thus armed to the teeth, he pushes us ahead of him and out into the courtyard, as if to our own execution.

One of the symptoms of the illness consuming me is a constant, exhausting fever. It flares up in the evening, and then I have the odd sensation that it is my bones that are radiating this high temperature. As if someone had replaced the bone marrow with high-resistance metal coils and hooked them up to an electric current. The coils become white-hot, and the entire skeleton, engulfed in an invisible, internal fire, burns.

It is impossible to sleep. On evenings like this in Dar es Salaam, I lie in my room and watch the lizards hunting. Those that usually prowl around the apartment are small, extremely animated, with a pale gray or brick-colored skin. Graceful, agile, they scurry effortlessly over the walls and ceiling. They never move at a considered, calm pace. First they stand motionless, paralyzed — then, suddenly, they dash off, reach some goal known only to themselves, and again freeze. Only by their rapidly pulsating abdomens can you tell that this sprint, this flinging of their bodies at an invisible finish line, has so exhausted them that it is now absolutely necessary for them to catch their breath, rest, and regain their strength — before the next lightning-fast run.

They begin hunting in the evening, after the lights have been turned on in the room. The objects of their interest and attack are various types of insects: flies, beetles, moths, dragonflies, and, most important, mosquitoes. The lizards appear suddenly, as if someone had sling-shot them onto the walls. They look around without moving their heads: their eyes are capable of 180-degree rotation within their sockets, like the telescopes of astronomers, thanks to which they can see everything both in front of and behind them.

A lizard has suddenly spotted a mosquito. It sets off in that direction. The mosquito sees the danger, starts up, and begins escape maneuvers. Interestingly it never flees downward, into the abyss above the floorboards, but rises into the air, circles nervously and angrily, and then, spiraling upward, lands on the ceiling. It doesn’t yet see, and it certainly does not understand, that this decision will have fatal consquences. For once it has attached itself to the ceiling, and its head is hanging down, it becomes disoriented, confused. As a result, instead of swiftly removing itself from the field of danger — which the ceiling represents — it behaves as if it had fallen into a hopeless trap.

Now the lizard can rejoice and lick its chops; victory is at hand. It takes nothing for granted, however — it remains focused, alert, and determined. It jumps onto the ceiling and begins to make smaller and smaller orbits around the mosquito, running all the while. Magic must play some role here, or witchcraft, or hypnosis, for the mosquito, although it could save itself simply by fleeing into empty space where no predator could reach it, permits itself to be encircled tighter and tighter by the lizard, which moves in its usual rhythm: a jump, then immobility; a jump, then immobility. The moment comes when the mosquito notices with terror that it has no more room to maneuver, that the lizard is close upon it, and this realization only stuns and disables it further, until, utterly resigned and defeated, it lets itself be swallowed without putting up the slightest resistance.

All attempts to befriend the lizards are futile. They are highly distrustful and skittish creatures, walking (or rather, scampering) along their own paths. This failure of ours also has a certain metaphorical value: individuals can live together, under one roof, without ever understanding one another, with no common language whatsoever.

On Zanzibar I cannot watch the forays of the lizards, because power is shut off every evening and I must wait patiently in the darkness for daylight. These long and empty hours, spent drowsily awaiting the break of day, are difficult.

Yesterday at dawn (which is never pale here, but instantly colorful, purple, fiery) the peal of a small bell resounded in the street. At first distant and muffled, it drew nearer and nearer, becoming clear, strong, and high-pitched. I looked out the window. An Arab was making his way down the narrow street — a vendor of hot coffee. He had on the embroidered cap Muslims wear, and a loose white djellabah. In one hand he carried a conical metal pot with a spout and in the other a basket full of porcelain cups.

The drinking of morning coffee is an age-old ritual here, with which — along with prayers — Muslims begin their day. The bell of the coffee seller, who each day at dawn walks up and down the streets of his district, is their traditional alarm clock. They jump up and wait in front of their houses, until the man bearing the fresh, strong, aromatic brew appears. The morning’s first cup is an occasion of greetings and salutations, of mutual assurances that the night passed happily, and of expressions of faith that this promises to be — Allah willing — a good day.

When we first arrived here, there was no coffee seller. And now, barely five days later, he was back: life was resuming its old course, normality and dailiness were returning. It is a beautiful and heartening thing, this obstinate, heroic human striving for normality, this almost instinctive searching for it — no matter what. Ordinary people here treat political cataclysms — coups d’état, military takeovers, revolutions, and wars — as phenomena belonging to the realm of nature. They approach them with exactly the same apathetic resignation and fatalism as they would a tempest. One can do nothing about them; one must simply wait them out, hiding under the roof, peering out from time to time to observe the sky — has the lightning ceased, are the clouds departing? If yes, then one can step outside once again and resume that which was momentarily interrupted — work, a journey, sitting in the sun.

The return to normal is relatively easy in Africa, and can even be accomplished quite rapidly. Because so much here is makeshift, impermanent, light, and shabby, it is possible instantly to destroy a village, a field, or a road — and just as quickly to rebuild them.

We usually went to the post office before noon to send our dispatches. There were already ten of us, for seven more foreign correspondents had been allowed in. The small post office building, adorned with arabesques, had a history: great travelers — Livingstone and Stanley, Burton and Speke, Cameron and Thomson — had sent their telegrams from here. The teleprinters inside reminded me of those long-ago days. Their exposed innards, with all their little wheels, cogs, gears, and levers, looked like the mechanisms of the huge old clocks in the towers of medieval city halls.

John, from UPI, a tall and eternally perplexed-looking blond-haired fellow, grabbed his head after reading the telegram he had just received. As we left the post office, he took me aside and showed me the alarming piece of paper. His editors were informing him that military revolts had erupted overnight in Kenya, Tanganyika, and Uganda, and that he must get to those countries at once. “At once!” John exclaimed. “At once, but how?”

The news was startling. Army coups! It looked serious, although we had no details. Barely a week ago — Zanzibar. Today already, the whole of East Africa! Clearly, the continent was entering a period of disturbances, revolts, takeovers. And we, the residents of the Zanzibar Hotel, now had a new problem: how to leave here? A longer stay made no sense in any event — Okello’s people would not let us travel beyond the town and into the countryside, where battles had raged earlier and, apparently, many were being held prisoner. As for the town itself it was peaceful, sleepy; the days passed uneventfully.

We had a meeting after returning to the hotel, during which John informed everyone about his telegram. We all wanted to get back to the mainland, but no one knew how. Zanzibar was still cut off from the rest of the world. To make matters worse, it looked as if the locals, still afraid of intervention, were holding us hostage. Karume, the only one who could help us, was elusive, spending most of his time at the airport, and of late he hadn’t been seen there, either.

There was really only one possibility: to try the sea route. Someone read in a guidebook that it is seventy-five kilometers from here to Dar es Salaam. It is a pleasant journey by ship — but where do we get a ship? A boat was out of the question. We couldn’t take the local boat owners into our confidence, because, even supposing they were still alive, they would be either in jail, or afraid to help, or they might inform against us. And the greatest danger of all was that Field Marshal Okello’s inexperienced, casually recruited people, scattered as they now were along the entire coastline, would begin shooting were they to spot a boat — after all, no one really controlled them.

As we were conferring, a messenger brought a new telegram together with our mail. His editors were once again ordering John to act quickly: the military had already seized airports and government buildings, and the prime ministers of the three countries had disappeared; perhaps they were in hiding, but it was uncertain if they were still alive. We listened to this sensational bulletin in helplessness and anger. Our little conference came to nothing. There was only one thing to do: wait.

The two Englishmen — Peter from Reuters and Aidan from Radio Tanganyika — had gone to look for their compatriots in the city, hoping with their help to find some way out. When they returned near evening they called another meeting. They had found an elderly Englishman who had decided to leave at the earliest opportunity and wanted to sell a motorboat in good condition. “The boat is moored nearby, in the port, in a secluded, out-of-the-way bay. He will take us there in the evening, along side paths and under cover of darkness. Hidden in the boat, we will wait until late at night, until the guards fall asleep. The Englishman, an old colonialist, said: ‘A negro is a negro. Be what may, he has to sleep.’ When midnight passes, we will start the motor and begin our escape. The nights are so dark now, that even if they did try to shoot, it is doubtful they could hit us.”

They finished, and silence descended. Then, the first voices were heard. As always, there were supporters and opponents of the idea. Questions were posed; a discussion began. Had there been other possibilities, this flight by boat would doubtless have seemed too risky and foolhardy. But there were none. The ground was burning beneath our feet, and time was of the essence. Zanzibar? With the same determination that we had tried to get here, we would now struggle to get out. Only Felix and Arnold were opposed. Felix deemed the plan idiotic, and considered himself too old for such adventures, while Arnold simply had too much valuable photographic equipment he was afraid to lose. They nevertheless agreed to pay our hotel bills when we were already out at sea, so as not to arouse suspicion.

A slight, gray-haired man arrived in the evening, dressed in the traditional costume of British colonial administrators: a white shirt, wide white shorts, and white kneesocks. We followed him. The darkness was so profound that his silhouette ahead of us appeared and disappeared like a phantom. Finally, we sensed boards beneath our feet — it was probably the pier. The old man whispered that we should walk down the steps to the boat. What steps? What boat? We couldn’t see anything. But he insisted, his words now resounding like commands. And we knew the field marshal’s men could be lurking somewhere close by. Mark, the Australian, a massive man with a wide, good-hearted face, climbed down first; during our earlier deliberations, he had maintained that he knew how to sail and could navigate the boat. He also had the key to the lock on the chain with which the boat was secured to the pier, and knew how to start the engine. When Mark’s foot reached the bottom of the boat, there was a splash, and everyone hissed for quiet! Quiet! We were now descending one after the other: the Englishmen, Peter and Aidan; the German, Thomas; the American, John; the Italian, Carlo; the Czech, Jarek; and I. Each tried to feel for the shape and location of the boat, where the side was and how the bulkheads were spaced, and then groped for a spot somewhere on the little bench, or failing that on the boat’s bottom.

The old Englishman disappeared and we were left alone. There were no lights anywhere. The silence was ever more penetrating. Only now and then could we hear a wave hitting the pier, and from somewhere far, very far away, the roll of the invisible ocean. So as to not give ourselves away, we honored the silence, uttering not a word. John’s watch had a phosphorescent dial, and he passed it around from time to time — the miniature glowing dot circulating from hand to hand: 22:30, 23:00, 23:30. We stayed this way, in the deepest darkness, half-asleep, numbed, and anxious, until John’s watch indicated two in the morning. Mark pulled on the line activating the engine. The motor, like a wild animal unexpectedly goaded, roared and howled. The boat rocked, lifted its bow, and took off straight ahead.

The Zanzibar port is on the western side of the island, the one closest to the continental coast. Logically, therefore, one would have to travel due west to reach the mainland, and southwest if the goal was Dar es Salaam. But for now we cared about one thing only: to gain as much distance as possible from the port. Mark set the controls to maximum speed, and the boat, shuddering ever so slightly, skimmed the calm, smooth surface. The darkness was still absolute, and no shots came from the direction of the island. The escape had succeeded; we were safe. This realization pulled us out of our torpor and our spirits rose. We motored along blissfully for more than an hour, then suddenly everything began to change. The hitherto glassy surface of the water started to move restlessly and violently. Waves reared up, crashing against the side of the boat, with increasing force, relentless. It was if a mighty fist were pounding with angry regularity at the hull. Strangely it seemed a force of blind savage cry and at the same time of cool, systematic calculation. A strong wind arose, and rain, the kind of downpour that comes only in the tropics: rain like a waterfall, rain like a wall of water. Because it was still dark, we lost our bearings completely; we no longer knew where we were, or in which direction we were headed. But soon even this became unimportant, for we were being hurled about by ever larger waves, by now so dangerous and frenzied, we couldn’t tell what would happen to us the next minute, the next second. The boat would heave and groan upward, freezing for a moment on the wave’s invisible summit, and then plunge abruptly from the precipice into a roaring abyss, a rumbling darkness.

Then the engine, flooded with water, stopped. Now the real hell. The disabled boat was tossed in every direction, spinning helplessly in a circle, while we waited, in terror, for the next wave to flip it over. Someone was shouting hysterically, someone else was calling to God for help, someone else still was lying on the bottom, moaning and vomiting. Everyone was desperately holding on to the sides. The squall drenched us over and over, seasickness tore out our insides, and if there was anything left of us, it was only an ice-cold animal fear. We had no inner tubes or life jackets, and death loomed with each approaching wave.

The engine was dead; we couldn’t restart it. Suddenly, Peter yelled through the gale: “Oil!” It had occurred to him that an engine of this type needs not only gasoline but also oil, mixed in with its fuel. He and Mark began rummaging through the storage places. They found a can and added the oil to the tank. Mark yanked a few times on the line; the engine sputtered, then roared. Our joyful shouts pierced the wind; the storm was still raging, but at least there was a hope now.

The dawn was gloomy, the clouds hung low in the sky, but the rain was breaking, and it was finally growing light. Where were we? All around was water, vast, dark, still agitated. In the distance, the horizon, rising and falling, undulating, in a measured, cosmic rhythm. Later, when the sun was high, we spotted a dark line on the horizon. Land! We headed in that direction. Before us was a flat shoreline, palm trees, a group of people, and in the background — huts. It turned out that we were back on Zanzibar, but far beyond the town. Not knowing the sea, we didn’t realize that we had been caught by the monsoon, which blows at this time of year, and which luckily spit the boat up here — it could well have carried us to the Persian Gulf, Pakistan, or India. No one would have survived such a journey — we would have died of thirst, or eaten one another from hunger.

We got out of the boat and fell, half-dead, on the sand. I couldn’t calm down, though, and began asking the assembled people how to get to town. One of them had a motorcycle and agreed to take me. We sped along through fragrant green tunnels, between banana trees, mangoes, and clove trees. The rush of hot air dried my shirt and pants — they were white and salty from the seawater. An hour later we reached the airport, where I was hoping to find Karume — and hoping he would help me get to Dar. Suddenly, I spotted a small plane standing on the runway, and Arnold loading his gear inside. In the shade of a wing stood Felix. When I ran up to him, he looked up, greeted me, and said:

“Your place is empty. It’s waiting for you. Get in.”